


any sign will do

by trashwriter



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Angst, Bisexual Rick Grimes, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, F/M, Female Rick Grimes, Protective Shane Walsh, Season/Series 02, Time Travel, Time Travel Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26537302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashwriter/pseuds/trashwriter
Summary: The interstate continues ahead of them, cracked and greying and laced with the black tarry webbing of temporary repairs. The county road that cut through it was smooth and dark, newly repaved on the one side before the Turn.She’s been here before, she realizes.
Relationships: Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Lori Grimes/Shane Walsh, Rick Grimes/Shane Walsh
Comments: 9
Kudos: 33





	any sign will do

The car doesn’t crash.

It’s not anything so dramatic as that.

Erica hits the breaks as a reflex, as automatic as breathing, and stumbles out of the car.

She doesn’t throw up either, but it’s a close thing as she gags on nothing, both hands braced on the hood of the Kia she hasn’t seen in, gods, four years? Five?

She’s dripping in sweat in an instant, but chilled to the bone and she spits quickly to rid her mouth of the lingering threat of bile, trying to pull herself together.

Its hard.

A moment ago, she’d been dying.

Now she’s somewhere else.

She hears the scrape of a boot behind her and she starts, jerking automatically out of reach of the outstretched hand.

Her hand drops to her belt. There’s a knife there, not a hatchet, but that’s fine. The blade is half-way out of its sheath before she registers that the reaching hand is Shane.

Shane who she hasn’t seen in longer years than the Kia. Not since she shoved this same knife into the spaces between his ribs and felt him die.

Shane who’s alive in front of her.

Shane who’s looking at her with bald worry in his big dark eyes.

“Rick?”

Erica leaves the knife where it is and reaches out with a bare hand instead.

This doesn’t feel like a hallucination.

Shane looks tired. Worn down to the ragged bones in spirit, if not in reality, with deep dark circles under his eyes his hair buzzed down to a fuzz.

His arm is warm and corded with muscle under her hand.

“Shane?” she croaks.

“Jesus,” he says, folding her hand in both of his briefly, before bushing her bangs back from her forehead and feeling with his wrist. “You’re burning up.”

“Where are we?” she asks, not sure what answer she expects to receive.

“Shit,” Shane huffs, cupping the side of her neck to hold her steady. “We’re on the interstate, Rickie, going to get rid of the kid.”

“Kid?”

“Randall,” Shane clarified, not quite able to keep his lip from curling up in a silent sneer.

The Kia. The Interstate. Georgia. Randall.

It’s all coming together. Painting a picture of the day, the month, the year. It all seeps out of the corners of her memories.

A day where she’d been filled with equal parts rage and hope. One of many days where she saw a far-distant light of relief from the horror that had become her life.

It was a Before kind of day.

Before the prison. Before the Governor. Before she’d really understood that everything could change in a second. Long before she’d learned to take her joy, her good days, where she could get them.

She’d skidded to a jerky stop in the middle of a crossroads.

The interstate continues ahead of them, cracked and greying and laced with the black tarry webbing of temporary repairs. The county road that cut through it was smooth and dark, newly repaved on the one side before the Turn.

She’s been here before, she realizes.

She’d stood in this very spot and had a conversation with Shane that had been as useless as it had been long overdue.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says in a bare murmur, still dazed. “’Bout Lori and Carl and Judy.”

“I’m here,” Shane says, his voice thick with concern. “Who’s Judy, Rick?”

“The baby, my daughter,” she answers.

Ah, and there’s the bitter light again. The one that she remembers from this time. The big fight between her and Shane.

She knows that Judy is Shane’s, biologically.

She looks just like Lori. Like Carl. Her baby blond hair has started going dark brown and curling just like her mother’s but her eyes are a brown so light that they’re almost the colour of whiskey. The male donor she and Lori had picked, the same one who’d given them Carl, had blue eyes.

It’s funny.

She’s started to be grateful that Judy is a piece of Shane, her best friend, as much as she’s a part of Lori. It’s stopped stinging quite so bad as she get’s older and starts to see the best parts of Shane in her daughter.

“Erica—” Shane shakes her a little by the shoulders.

“Oh, don’t do that,” she groans, immediately slumping back down to put her head between her knees.

“Shit, sorry.”

He lets go immediately when she starts to gag again, stepping back with a speed that would be comical if it weren’t also so sad.

“Shouldn’t’ve said that,” she adds, once she’s sure she’s not going to hurl. “I know. I know there’s no chance she can be mine. That it was the IVF and not the affair. I know it hurts you. What Lori n’ me are doing.”

“You don’t know the baby’s a girl, Rickie, you can’t,” Shane says, slow and sharp, completely avoiding her apology.

Erica laughs a little and it’s strange sound, the delighted little giggle that tumbles out of her.

She looks up and Shane is treated to a small, fond smile.

“I know,” she says. “She looks like Lori, but she’ll get your eyes. Same shape and size and just a few shades lighter.”

Shane couldn’t have looked more surprised if she’d cracked him cold across the face and Erica had to laugh again.

“She’s so beautiful, Shane,” she tells him. “So smart and so good.”

“Rickie, you’re not talking sense. The baby isn’t even a bump between Lori’s hip bones,” he says. “You’ve got a bad fever, girl, we should get you back to the farm.”

“I’m fine,” Erica says. “We’ve gotta take care of Randall, right?”

Shane grimaces but nods.

“So, I’ll take you back and then come back out.”

“Can’t waste the fuel,” Erica points out. “Gonna need it.”

“What we can’t do is let you get killed out here being stupid!”

Erica cocks her head at him, fixing him with the stare she knows is unnerving.

“Why not? It’s easier for you if I get myself killed, right? Then you don’t have to do it yourself. Don’t have to feel guilty ‘bout it. Lori and Carl, they’d be broken up about it but they’d move on, they’ve done it before.”

And just like that Shane is furious.

“Is that what you think of me?” he demands. “Huh? You and Dale such pals now that you think I could just, what? Let you get yourself killed, and then pick up where I left off the last time I thought you were dead? You think I could live like that?”

“I know you couldn’t,” she says. “You’re already spiralling. Killing Otis has you spun out like a frayed thread, and that was for Carl. Needed to be done. And I wouldn’t let you kill me anyway.”

“And what _exactly_ do you mean by that?”

His voice is low and dangerous and Shane has his feet planted and his jaw locked tight. His hands clench and unclench on the grips of the shotgun.

Erica looks at Shane, here and now in this towering fury and thinks of how her stance is unbalanced and she’s trapped between him and the car and how there’s nothing stopping him from shooting her right here, right now. The story from so long ago, that Randall got out, got his gun. Shot her. Only suspicious, old Dale would ever have reason to believe anything different.

She’s not afraid though.

She’s survived worse than Shane, and for all his posturing, she doesn’t think he could really kill her. He hesitates every single time. Too attached to her. He’s not capable of being cold all the way through when it comes to her. Not like she is.

“I heard what happened at the school,” she says, back tracking a little. “I know why you did it. You were injured, slow. Either one or both of you wasn’t going to make it out of there and you made the call. Your life, Carl’s life. I get it.”

She pauses so that Shane can laugh at her, a bitter, condescending sound. 

“You don’t. You can’t,” he says, so sure and so bitter. “You’re too much the good guy, Rickie. You never would’ve been able to make that decision in the moment. You’d’ve tried to find another way and it would’ve killed you both, and Carl.”

It’s a ludicrous claim. How many people has she killed now? She doesn’t even remember the number, but it’s a lot, and not all of them needed killing. Even now her count is two or three to Shane’s one and he still doesn’t believe that she’ll do what is necessary?

Erica shakes her head and an incredulous sound falls from her mouth.

“You really don’t understand me at all do you?” she says, wondering. “This is the root of it, isn’t it? You think that I’m…weak. No, wait, that’s not quite it, you think that I’m soft. That I don’t have it in me to be ruthless. You don’t think that I can keep Lori and Carl safe.”

“I didn’t say that.”

Erica shakes her head slightly rueful.

All those years ago she’d thought that here in this crossroad she and Shane had reached an understanding. An appreciation of what they were each willing to do to protect the people they loved. She’d thought at the time that Shane had taken the warning for what it was, weighed the risk and still found her wanting.

But he’d always believed that she was better than she was.

And that’s why he’d died on the point of her knife.

He didn’t understand who she was, what she was capable of, or what drove her. He never had. Not even after all the years they’d been friends.

It was almost sad.

“Alright then,” she says pushing herself to her feet. “C’mon.”

She feels herself settle. She’s not nauseated anymore. She’s not chilled with fever.

She’s steady in her old boots. She feels her gait shift and change. She’s not quite Daryl, who’s as quiet as a stalking cat, but her steps are light and sure as she strides up to the trunk of the Kia and pops it.

“Rick,” Shane protests. “You’re not thinking right.”

She doesn’t spare him a backwards glance.

He’s not stopping her. He wants to see whatever it is she’s going to show him. The protest is a test. She wonders if Shane knows that he’s doing it.

Randall is tied up in the trunk. The headphones in his ears are blaring rock music, loud enough that Erica can hear it through the makeshift hood.

She pulls it off.

Randall looks up at her.

Skinny and terrified and young, but not that young.

He’s got a look about him.

Now that Erica knows what to look for, has had more experience, she sees it more clearly. There’s something in and around his eyes that reminds her of someone, though she can’t think of who at the moment.

The longer she looks at him the more Randall squirms so she lets it drag on for another long moment. 

Finally, she cuts the rope around his ankles and drags him to his feet.

She frog-marches him out into the middle of the crossroads and kicks him onto his knees.

She can feel Shane looming behind her, but she doesn’t look back.

“Listen to me very carefully,” she tells Randall. “Are you listening?”

Randall nods frantically.

“I don’t want to kill you Randall, but I will.”

Randall whimpers and Erica can hear the shotgun creak in Shane’s grip.

“In a moment I am going to take that tape off your mouth and ask you a couple of questions,” she tells him. “There’re only three. Answer well and you live. If you don’t, you die. Understand?”

“Rick—”

Erica glances at him over her shoulder, she doesn’t know what look is on her face but it stops him cold and Erica turns her attention back to Randall.

“Do you understand?” she asks again.

Randall is nodding again. His eyes are glassy with tears and he’s breathing fast.

Erica tears the tape away from his mouth and face and levels the Python at his head.

“Please,” he begs as soon as his mouth is free. “Please, I’m not a bad guy, I’m not!”

Erica isn’t moved.

“Are you ready?” she asks.

“Jesus lady!”

“Are you ready?”

“Yeah, yeah, y-yes,” he says.

“How many walkers have you killed?”

Randall blinks like he wasn’t expecting the question.

“A-a few, like six or ten, I dunno, it’s not like I count ‘em,” he sputters, increasingly defensive.

“How many people have you killed?”

Behind her Shane’s boots shift on the pavement again. She’s surprised him, she thinks.

“What?”

“How many?”

“None! I never—you have to believe me, I’m not like the guys in my group, I’m not! I never killed anyone! I swear!”

He’s not lying, and Erica’s not really surprised. He’s not the type to kill. He’s the type to run with killers, to linger around the outskirts of a group and let them do his dirty work.

“Why?”

“Whadda you mean why?”

“Why haven’t you killed anyone?” she asks.

“Cause I’m not like that!” he says, looking right into her eyes. “I’m a good person, I just met those guys and I didn’t want them to hurt me so I did what they said, okay? I’m not like them though I could never kill people!”

And there it is, the lie she was expecting.

“You’re not a bad person ‘cause you never killed anyone?” Erica says, arching a brow. “But what about the man you met on the road. The one with three daughters?” 

Randall immediately goes white as milk and starts to shake again.

“How’d you know ‘bout that?” he says without thinking.

“I had a chat with Dave and Tony, in the bar.”

“Please, I didn’t touch ‘em,” he says. “I wouldn’t! One of ‘em wasn’t even sixteen yet!”

Another lie, Erica thinks critically.

It’s a good one. She thinks Randall almost has himself convinced. Maybe he didn’t get his dick wet but he was definitely there, in the room when it happened. And from what she’s seeing he probably enjoyed himself plenty without touching those girls.

“Please, I—”

The shot is loud, out there on the empty road and, in the distance, Erica can see a lone walker turn towards them.

Erica almost regrets wasting the bullet, but Shane doesn’t need to see all of what she is just yet. A clean execution is already more than he thought she was capable of.

She holsters the Python with a sigh and turns to face Shane.

He’s looking at her like he’s never seen her before in his life, and, Erica reflects, he’s never seen this her.

This her had barely even existed in this time. It was all just potential, at least until the day she killed him.

For her though, that day is long past and she’s standing here in her own past, something less than the woman she used to be, than the woman Shane knows. 

“You killed him. After you went through all that trouble of saving him. What the hell was that?” Shane says finally.

“That was me making the decision. Eliminating the threat, when I had the option to do otherwise. That was me not taking chances with the safety of the group,” she tells him. “That was me correcting an error in judgement. Should’ve given him mercy and left him for the walkers. It would’ve been better than he deserved, though I couldn’t have known it at the time.”

“Jesus, Rickie…”

Shane’s grip on his weapon is white-knuckled and his teeth are grinding. He looks like he can’t decide whether he wants to yell at her or not.

That’s probably just because he doesn’t know what to say.

Erica does have to admit this whole thing is sudden. It is for her too.

She doesn’t know what this is, if it’s real or just some coma dream, something that she’ll never wake up from.

It feels real.

It smells real.

As real as the harsh urgent grip of Michonne’s hand and the slow slide of blood out of her body and along her ruined spine.

More real maybe, when Shane moves in a sudden jerky burst.

He paces away from her a bit, scrubs the stubble on his head with vigor, and then wheels back around.

“What is this? Huh?” he demands. “What’re you doin’ Rickie?”

Erica wants to sigh. Frustration curls in her belly.

Nothing she does is ever good enough for Shane Walsh.

“What I have to,” she tells him, tired all of a sudden. “I’m doing what I have to, like always. Help me with the body?”

Shane doesn’t move, that look is back on his face, half-way incredulous, half-way furious.

Erica turns her back on him, because, quite frankly, she’s been dying for the past however long and she’s just had to kill someone and she’s too tired to deal with Shane’s latest crisis.

She takes Randall under the arms and drags him out of the crossroads and into the tall grass.

The walker is making its way toward them steadily, shuffling through the field, and she drags Randall a little further into the grass. In case the walker stops to feed, in case it settles near the body and someone comes by and doesn’t see it, crouched there in the grass.

Eight extra feet. Enough to give a wary body plenty of head start.

There’s blood on her shirt and hands, but they have the Kia so she’s not too concerned about it. It won’t draw walkers and she can clean up at camp.

Shane is still standing where she left him. Watching her work.

The fury has gone from his face and there’s something a little more familiar there.

Worry. Concern for her, and maybe a little about her. It’s hard to say for sure.

Erica tries not to worry that she’s made some kind of mistake. Tipped her hand too early.

If Shane tries anything, she’ll kill him. She knows this about herself. But by the same token, she can’t stop trying to convince him not to try it. She’s known Shane since she was in pigtails and misses him like a limb sometimes, even now, years after the deed.

If she can erase this one scar on her soul, she thinks, she might be a little happier. A little less cold.

She doesn’t have a lot of time to convince him though.

Nor, as it turns out, a good idea about how to go about managing it.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been sitting on this for a while (since before the twd season 6 finale) but wasn't sure if there'd be interest so i kind of let it marinate
> 
> for now this is just going to cover the events of last few episodes of season 2 and then if there's interest I'll keep going
> 
> let me know what you guys think


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